How to search Google for your name
Google search is excellent for compers – I’ve already showed you how to search for competitions using the advanced tools, but you should also be regularly searching for your own name in case you’ve missed a win. You’ll be surprised how many promoters don’t get in touch with their winners and are reliant on you spotting an announcement!
Below is a short video guide to googling your name – use it to set up your own search and when you’re happy with the results, bookmark that search for regular use. Along with Googling, you should be checking Social Searcher and the Competition Winners Facebook group for your name.
Tips for your Google name search
- Go to www.google.com (log in if you have a Google account) and type “your name” – always put your name in quotes, as the results will only include pages with the words in exactly the same order as what’s inside the quotes – eg. “Di Coke”. For a single word/username, eg superluckydi, you don’t need quotes.
- Add a combination of keywords like winner, prize, winners, congratulations, etc after your name. Type OR in capital letters between search terms, eg. “Di Coke” winner OR winners OR congratulations gives results for any of those keywords – without the OR, Google would only show websites that match ALL keywords.
- When you get the results, click Search Tools (on a mobile device, you’ll find this by tapping More), change Any Country to your country of choice and change Any Time to a date range of your choice – try Past week.
- If you have the same name as a celebrity, you can exclude words from your search results, simply add a dash (minus sign) before the word eg. “Chris Martin” -Coldplay would give you search results on that name, but NOT any that mention Coldplay!
- Use browser bookmarks to save your searches so you can check them regularly – to add a bookmark, try Ctrl-D, Cmd-D or tapping the star icon, depending on your browser.
- If you have a common name, consider adding a middle name or initial to your registered Facebook name, eg “Sam F Jones” rather than “Sam Jones”. This will make it easier to find your name both on Google, and in Facebook searches – it can be disappointing to claim a prize only to discover that the winner was actually someone else with the same name as you!
Has a Google search resulted in any exciting wins for you? Let me know in the comments section!
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I saw your article some time ago and did a search just before going to bed one night. I was absolutely amazed. It listed that I’d won, £50, a silk orchid, a camcorder and three or four other prizes, all unclaimed – all from different competitions. There were even a couple that had gone past the claim date, but I did get all the rest above. Thank you so much, if I hadn’t seen your article I would have missed them all.
Result! 🙂
I missed one last week as they had tagged my name with the wrong spelling. Luckily, they emailed me today as the prize was worth £125, including a £50 Hotel Chocolat voucher. Phew!
I’d never thought of checking incorrect spelling, must include that as a tip!
that is really handy, iv searched for my name on there before and it came up with loads of things from years ago to people with similar names, this way is loads better.
Thank you, Di! I’ve always been annoyed by out of date searches but now I know how to find recent ones thanks to you. 🙂